News tagged: Suddenlink

Since last October, Viacom and Suddenlink have been engaged in one of many retransmission fee disputes, resulting in not only Suddenlink TV customers losing Viacom channels -- but Suddenlink broadband customers being blocked from watching any online Viacom content whatsoever. Usually after a lot of very public whining the two sides reach a confidential number they can agree on, but in this case it appears that Suddenlink customers may never see this content return.

Speaking about the company's latest earnings (which reveal Suddenlink lost 34,800 customers last quarter), Suddenlink Communications CEO Jerry Kent stated that the company had "moved on" from their negotiations with Viacom over a new contract agreement:

quote:“We’ve moved on,” Kent said in an interview. “We have replaced the channels with some really high-quality programming from Disney, Discovery, Fox and Hallmark.” The Suddenlink chief didn't completely shut the door, though. "If Viacom would come back to the negotiating table and give us attractive rates for those channels we want to carry, we would be happy to [carry] them," Kent added.

With two of Viacom's biggest draws, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart moving on from Comedy Central, cable operators haven't been quite as willing to concede to Viacom's demands in recent months. While a deal could be struck, it's apparently going to have to involve Viacom pulling back on their monetary demands.

While Suddenlink is busy advertising scattered deployment of 1 Gbps services, some users say the company is busy lowering usage caps on some of the ISP's slower tiers. Users in our Suddenlink forum claim that Suddenlink has quietly reduced the usage allotment on their 300 Mbps tier from 500 GB to 400 GB.

Despite the company's recent ugly retrans fight with Viacom, Suddenlink says the company isn't giving up on cable TV like we've seen among many smaller and mid-sized cable companies. "We have confidence in our video business," Suddenly CEO Jerry Kent insists. "We believe in the video business. We're not giving up on the video business." Suddenlink customers have been unable to get Viacom content either via TV or online since early last month, though Kent claims they've seen no meaningful number of user disconnects.

As promised, Suddenlink has pulled all of Viacom's channels from the cable company's lineup after the two sides failed to agree on retransmission fee increases. As noted previously, Suddenlink replaced all Viacom channels with alternative content that will vary by zip code -- among them Glenn Beck's new opinion channel "TheBlaze." Suddenlink claims that Viacom demanded a 50% rate hike to carry the channels, despite many of those channels seeing falling ratings.

Suddenlink is threatening to pull Viacom channels from their lineup if the two sides can't reach a compromise on retransmission pricing by October 1. "...Despite our repeated requests for Viacom to reconsider, they refused to make a fair and reasonable offer for their channels," the company tells consumers over at the SuddenlinkOnYourSide.com website. "Because it’s simply not fair to ask Suddenlink customers to pay a lot more for channels that, on average, they watch a lot less, we will – starting this Wednesday, October 1 – no longer carry the Viacom channels." Instead, says Suddenlink, they'll be replacing those channels with non-Viacom owned channels that vary by area (you can head here to plug in your zip and check).

Back in August Suddenlink Communications joined the 1 Gbps fiber to the press release craze by proudly proclaiming they'd be bringing 1 Gbps service to 90% of the company's footprint by 2017. Like Cox, Suddenlink hopes to do this using the unfinished DOCSIS 3.1 standard, which isn't expected to be commercially available in volume until 2016.

A few days ago we noted that Suddenlink was the latest to throw its hat into the 1 Gbps ring, insisting that the company would be offering 1 Gbps to 90% of its customers by 2017. The move is an aggressive one for a company not historically known for aggressive upgrades, leading one to wonder how exactly Suddenlink hopes to manage this feat. While DOCSIS 3.0 can achieve a lot via channel bonding, we're several years out from seeing reliable 1 Gbps on cable, especially upstream.

The as-yet unfinished DOCSIS 3.1 standard might be able to get part of the way there when it's finished two years or so from now, but Suddenlink insists that's not what they'll be using:

quote:Given that DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging CableLabs spec that is targeting multi-gigabit speeds, is about two years away from scaled deployments, I asked the MSO if Operation GigaSpeed “hinged on” the 3.1 technology, and the answer was no. And the company declined to answer if FTTP would factor into Operation GigaSpeed, particularly in greenfields.

2017 isn't really that far away, leaving you to wonder if Suddenlink has developed a miracle technology they're keeping hidden in the wings, or if their promise is hot air designed largely to deflect criticism for lagging behind in the age of Google Fiber.

Add Suddenlink to the list of companies claiming that they too will someday offer 1 Gbps services. In a clear response to Google Fiber and the excitement around 1 Gbps service, Suddenlink has launched what they're calling "Operation GigaSpeed." In an earnings update, Suddenlink claims that Operation GigaSpeed will bump the company's 15 Mbps tier to 200 Mbps, and the company's 107 Mbps tier to 1 Gbps.

There have been rumors for some time that Netflix has been in talks with cable operators to bring Netflix streaming to cable set top boxes. So far however those deals have largely materialized overseas, with larger U.S.

Some users in our Suddenlink forum indicate that the cable operator will soon be offering a 300 Mbps tier to some users. According to a letter sent to one user in Georgetown, Texas, the company states they'll soon be offering the 300 Mbps tier, but fails to get specific about price or upstream speed. The upgrades appear to be coming at the same time as the removal of analog channels. I've dropped a line to SuddenLink to get more specific details on which markets will be seeing the upgrade.

Netflix has released their latest rankings for average ISP streaming speeds, with Google Fiber, Cablevision, Cox, Suddenlink and Charter rounding out the top five. In a blog post Netflix notes that Bright House and Comcast tumbled five spots in the rankings while refusing to specifically state why (though Reddit users have their theories in regards to Comcast).

Cable operator Suddenlink's recent earnings indicate that the company lost 3,000 TV subscribers last quarter but added 21,900 broadband and 18,000 net phone subscribers. Those broadband adds are a stark improvement to the 9,000 broadband subscribers the company lost last quarter, the company taking a bit of a PR hit earlier this year for new usage meters that didn't accurately track consumer bandwidth usage. According to statements made by company executives on their earnings call, the company is seeing an uptick in non-TV broadband customers, who now account for 20% of the company's total customer relationships.

Last summer, cable operator Suddenlink decided to impose caps and charge their users overages -- before bothering to ensure that their usage meters worked. The result was a large number of complaints from users about meters that weren't reliable, and even tracked phantom subscriber usage when the power went out or modems were off.

Last summer, cable operator Suddenlink decided to impose caps and charge their users overages -- before bothering to ensure that their usage meters worked. The result was a large number of complaints from users about meters that weren't reliable, and even tracked phantom subscriber usage when the power went out or modems were off. Suddenlink then suspended the usage meter and overage plans, first insisting their meters were accurate -- then acknowledging they did find problems. Some seven months later and users in our forums point out that the meters have returned, though Suddenlink hasn't returned to its plan to charge overages -- yet.

Suddenlink Communications has had a rough week when it comes to protecting its infrastructure from vandalism. The ISP has suffered through four different outages this week alone, all of them thanks to someone breaking into Suddenlink's vaults and severing fiber optic connections.

It has been about half a decade now that I've been pointing out that most of the meters used by ISPs to track and bill consumers for usage aren't accurate. Customers of Canadian cable operator Cogeco have long complained the company's meter is inaccurate when users can load it at all, and every so often the meter simply goes mad -- like last Spring when the meter was horribly confused by leap year.

FCC boss Julius Genachowski has been busy lately paying lip service to Silicon Valley, most recently telling a bunch of Silicon Valley conference attendees that caps were something we should be "concerned" about, after telling cable companies just a few months earlier he thought caps and overages are nifty and innovative. Speaking again to Silicon Valley folks yesterday at a speech at Vox Media headquarters, Genachowski hashed out his muddy position a little further, again insisting he was "concerned" about caps -- sort of -- maybe:

quote:(Growing usage) presents challenges for broadband providers in managing the growing loads on their networks while earning returns to drive capital investment in network upgrades and expansion.

Last week we pointed out that for months Suddenlink has been charging users usage overages despite a constant stream of complaints by those users that the meters they're using aren't accurate. Users have consistently reported phantom usage that doesn't match their own logs, even in instances when the power is out.